The mobile web has been the dominant subject in web design for the past 2+ years. A quick peek at Dribbble, a social media site where designers share their projects, will show you that many of us are working on mobile device apps and interfaces.

However, it’s still safe to say that most websites have given little to no attention to their mobile web presence. Most of the innovative mobile device web designs we’re seeing are on big, industry-leading, tech-centric sites such as Amazon.com, Google, and Digg, or niche sites targeted toward web designers (such as A List Apart).

Where we’re not seeing mobile web design implementations are in run-of-the-mill company and corporate sites. Small- and medium-sized businesses, Fortune 500 companies, and government websites are sadly falling behind instead of in line.

However, companies are beginning to see the rewards of meeting the needs of mobile device users. In the years to come, there will be a significant shift in attention toward the mobile web presence in all websites.

There are already several mobile web tools you can use for creating a mobile web version of your site; it’s time companies seriously look into implementing these cost-effective and relatively simple solutions as either a stop-gap solution or a permanent one.

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There is a thin line between design and development, and as we move into a new decade, this line is becoming extremely blurry. Is it enough to draw beautiful mock ups in Photoshop? Maybe 5 years ago. These days, the average internet user requires more. All beauty, with no substance, gets boring after a while. If your only goal is to impress a community of fellow designers with your flashy designs, you’ll find yourself quickly beneath the tide. 2011 is not about beauty, it’s about function. The trends for this new year and emerging decade are responsive design, constant connection and virtual reality.

How will you stay relevant as a designer in 2011? The ultimate goal of a designer is not to dazzle but to entangle. Any designer can get ‘oohs’ and ‘ahhs’ that are easily forgotten. The supreme designer is able to create an environment which charms and captivates the user to the point where he does not want to find the ‘Back’ button. Several elements come together to forge such a wonderland: harmonious color scheme, intuitive design, easily accessible information and fast response. Additionally, one can never under-estimate the power of simplicity. Of course, this has always been the case, but in 2011, you are no longer at the forgiving discretion of the desktop, or even laptop, computer. Now, your design must contend with smart phones, netbooks, tablets and the like. Are you ready?

Take a gander at the top 11 trends for 2011.

1. More CSS3 + HTML5

What a gratifying sigh of relief! CSS3 and HTML5 have been on the distant horizon of web design for the past couple of years, but now, in 2011, we see an explosion of it. Designers are finally starting to let go of Flash. However you may feel about Flash, you do know that it does not play well with some of the hot, new technology available to your current and potential visitors. In 2011, you will slowly step away from Flash and embrace the magic known as HTML5. Look at the amazingly similar comparison:

Now that’s shown, please understand that Flash and HTML5 are not equal opponents. There is plenty of room for both in 2011. The problem is that designers in 2010 (and before) misused Flash. Case in point, very rarely should your entire site be made of Flash, especially these days. HTML5 alleviates some of the burden we have placed on Flash. However, HTML5 cannot (yet) replace the extraordinary design elements we can achieve through Flash.

Perhaps even more exciting is the fact that CSS3 is available to us in a real way this year. Move over Photoshop (wow, Adobe just cannot rest), because CSS3 is making short work of text shadow, border radius and image transparency. If you have not already begun, now is the time to really delve into understanding CSS3 and HTML5.

2. Simple Color Schemes

Simplicity. There’s nothing quite as impacting as an honest message on a quiet backdrop. Quiet can be interpreted several different ways. Forget black and white or shades of gray. Think of green, yellow or even red as your primary color. However, limit your palette to two or three colors. Work within the shades of each color for variety. It can be truly remarkable what a few colors can do for your message. Observe:

Shades of green create this Twitter visualization tool. Side note: this site was created with XHTML/CSS and Javascript.

Red can be jarring if done incorrectly. This site gets it right by subduing the color’s overwhelming personality with easy-to-read high contrast text.

3. Mobile Ready

Smartphones, iPads, netbooks, oh my! There’s a dizzying amount of mobile products available to the consumer in 2011. This means your web design must be responsive to multiple viewports.

Creating a mobile ready website is not simply removing the bells and whistles from your design. This can create a vacant and impersonal design. Although not impossible, distilling the magic from your original design into a pure representation of your brand is tough! Fortunately, technology is quickly removing this burden.

With the help of CSS3, primarily media queries, mobile web design has taken a big leap forward (more on this later). One of the most important advances is that you can design a whole site and allow your coding to conform to the user’s viewing medium.

It may be tempting to just create a dedicated mobile site, but that may no longer satisfy your audience. Increasingly, mobile sites include the option to visit the original site. If you do not offer this option or if your original site is not optimized to mobile standards, you are simply not ready for 2011. Forecasters predict that smartphones will outsell personal computers this year. Bulletproof your design to meet this demand.

4. Parallax Scrolling

Parallax scrolling: not just for old school video games. As aforementioned, the hot web design trend for 2011 is creating a sense of depth. What better way to create that than with parallax scrolling? The parallax effect uses layers to present the illusion of a 3 dimensional space. It can be accomplished with some simple CSS tricks or the help of jQuery plugins like Spritely. Parallax scrolling can be most effective as a secondary element on your design, for example, as a header, footer, or background. Making it an integral part of your navigation may prove frustrating for your site visitor.

The Old Pulteney Row to the Pole website uses a top down parallax scrolling effect for the background. This adds a nice subtle amount of depth and lots of interest.

5. Designing for Touch Screens, Not Mice

Technology has become much more tactile. Usability is shifting from abstract to tangible. This means that instead of navigating your mouse to remotely connect, your destination is literally at your fingertips. Tablets, most smartphones and some desktops use touchscreens. Does your design accommodate fingertip navigation?

How much of your design is mouse-oriented? As designers, we worship mice. Our links light up when the mouse hovers over. However, there’s no hovering in touchscreen. How will your design indicate links to your visitors? What about drop-down menus? That’s also a no-go in touchscreen design.

Similarly, how will visitors peruse your site? As controversial as it may be for standard web browsing, horizontal scrolling may be more appropriate for touchscreens. Fitting nicely into this niche is a magazine-like layout where visitors virtually flip through your site.

Lastly, consider using liquid layouts as part of your commitment toward responsive design. In 2011, you are no longer dealing with screen resolution size. Visitors can change their viewing orientation from vertical to horizontal. Your design must be flexible to meet any challenge, or you will be a relic of 2010.

Baby sees the iPad Magic, Copyright Steve Paine, Flickr

6. Depth Perception in Web Design

No, we are not dealing with the aerial ‘I can see your coffee cup and keyboard on your website’ design of two years ago. Depth perception is about creating dimension in your web design, so that parts of your site looks nearer than others. It conjures a faux 3D effect when done masterfully. Remember what it felt like watching the blockbuster 3D movie, Avatar? The elements jumped off of the screen, quite literally.

Although 3D technology has no yet made it to web design, you can still replicate depth in your design.

This playful website features a rotatable, 3D planet and makes use of depth with well-placed shadows and layering.

Eye-catching and smart, this celebration of Jordan (both the man and shoe) is thoroughly entertaining. The 3D elements are crisp and simple, which what makes them so stunning.

Created by Jacqueline Thomas

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The term social media marketing is also known as social media optimization or SMO.SMO gives site owners the chance to make and establish networks, have productive relationships with customers and help their business grow naturally by word of mouth. Most common platforms used by people are Facebook, YouTube,LinkedIn, Twitter, MySpace and Digg. There are numerous possible platforms like blogs, social networking sites, forums and web communities that people can join.

Social media marketing actually uses a different distribution channel for goods and services- the Internet. Similarly,it is the same vehicle used for social media marketing and in this case, links and huge traffic is the real edge in competitiveness. For newbies, traffic equates to people going to your site or blog. The more natural the traffic, the rankings of your site would increase and have enhanced standing in reputation aggregators like Yahoo, Google, Ask Jeeves and other browsers. Usually, social media marketing needs some cash spending but it’s worthwhile it as long as you get  large traffic to your site. Link building by submitting articles to reputable websites can also benefit for your website. People who read your content can link back and that helps a lot in enhancing your ranking. Because of this, online business owners should devote attentiona nd resources to social media marketing.

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Social marketing strategies are in way reminiscent of a marketing strategy. Certain concepts are adapted from marketing theories and the four or five elements found in the marketing mix. The marketing mix elements often applied in social marketing strategies are product, price, place and promotion. In one way or another, social marketing strategies puts in additional element that match a given campaign. One of the most important consideration that has to be done in creating social marketing strategies is establishing the objective. There must be a very specific goal that must be communicated to the public. For example, a campaign on breast cancer may utilize all of the marketing mix to create powerful social marketing strategies. The following discussion presents a good example of social marketing strategies that are often used for breast cancer campaigns.

Normally, the main goal in creating social marketing strategies is awareness and then prevention. In the case of breast cancer campaign, a common approach would be  convincing women of a certain age to have a mammogram and doing monthly self breast exams. This is the real product behind social marketing strategies. As for the cost, the public is given a warning of how costly breast cancer can be for a person. Promotions are done by conducting community campaigns that offers free screening to a target audience so women do appreciate the effort. Other elements in social marketing strategies for health campaign are tie-ups with health institutions like clinics and hospitals. The P for public is the most essential element since they are the target audience. In conclusion, social marketing strategies help agencies to promote wellness at the same time influence behavior.

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To have a clearer understanding of  community based social  marketing, it is helpful to understand some tools that are often used in creating campaigns. For example , many programs that concerns sustainability have turned to community based social marketing as a vehicle since this is effective in reaching out to the public. For one, this type of promotion is more personal and can handle queries from the public thereby producing a higher rate of  behavioral change. The following tools are known as valuable in launching as community based social marketing:

•        Prompts – they act as simple reminders in the form of visual images like bumper stickers that rermind people to drive safely or recycle waste

•        Commitments – this can be in the form of a pledge that people can sign

•        Norms – most of the time, norms can be set by society or community like teaching kids to do recycling

•        Very persuading communications using visual images that can act as deterrent to negative behavior like drunk driving
Actually, there are numerous approaches to community based social marketing aside from the give, the important thing is that they achieve a goal.

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Social web marketing is typically employed by businesses today since they are viral- they rapidly spread to people. Nevertheless, there are some factors that you need to know about social web marketing. First, if in the real world you need an endorser or connection, in social web marketing you need reputation aggregators. These are search engines that can quickly promote you website, blog or link to people worldwide. Popular search engines like Yahoo, Google and Ask Jeeves are powerful in making an impression to browsers about your service or product. Such search engines operates using complicated algorithm to rank all the websites including yours. Remember, you are selling to the world so a lot of details have to be considered in social web marketing.

In addition, the right path to great business efficiency in social web marketing is combining any of these three: a website, blog or joining a social network. It would be preferable when you have all the three elements so you can direct customers to all your goods or services. Somehow, each of these mix have a different purpose. The blog is designed for creating reviews, comments, introduction or any worthwhile content for people to learn. If they find the content relevant, they would visit the website to see more stuff. In most cases, website with a blog is the most common combination. Being a member of social networks also pay a lot in the long run since people or friends can refer your site. In return, you get free viral promotion that spreads your site like a wildfire.

Social web marketing is a necessity in this modern life. Without it your business will make it obsolete.

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Social marketing campaigns originally get its concept from the social marketing theory. Social marketing is defined by the National Social Marketing Centre 2006 as “systematic application of marketing, along with other concepts and techniques to achieve specific behavioral goals for a social good”. So if statistics reveal that smoking  cause respiratory diseases that cuts productivity, then health agencies can launch social marketing campaigns that would influence the public to quit smoking. This has been currently practiced in some Asian countries where packs of cigarettes contain vivid images of sick lungs.

Social marketing campaigns can deliver effective messages and promote awareness to the public especially when the medium used is powerful For example, London’s media ad using social marketing campaigns directed towards use of seatbelt is powerful. This was a result of a good campaign since they showed gruesome accidents that can create behavioral change among drivers. However launching social marketing campaigns are also challenging since people do not usually change behavior especially when an act has become a habit like smoking, drinking or reckless driving. It is very important then for social marketing campaigns to know barriers to behavior so the public can be influenced to exhibit behavioral changes. Statistical research for social marketing campaigns are also important for data increase credibility of reports. Also, using community based social marketing campaigns are quite efficient since they reach out to the people on a more personal level. Cost is another thing to consider since people measure the price of giving up or starting a habit. Technology like the Internet has also been widely used for creating social marketing campaigns. Nonetheless, regardless of strategy adopted, social marketing campaigns benefit the society in general.

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Since social marketing advertising is so popular, what used to be teen-ager’s point of interaction on the net is now a goldmine for marketers. Again, who doesn’t want to capture Facebook’s millions of users worldwide? Nonetheless,it maybe easy to join the bandwagon and start joining social media advertising like crazy but that isn’t just a smart move at all. It takes a lot of determination and some set skills to create reputation when using social marketing advertising. If you need to know more about social media, then please read the following tips:

Research about social media channel. To have a great impact on social marketing advertising, choose well your channel. If most of the target clients you have for your choco lava nail polish or fruity lip gloss, try MySpace. It’s like knowing where your audience hang around since selling the item or service to the wrong place would not ring your cash register.

Communicate your message directly and correctly to the audience. Some ads on Facebook just throw money by posting ads that send useless and vague messages. Write content about diet success stories and then link the ads to your post. This gets the message effectively across to the audience. A lot of people think it’s a scam when you post money making jobs, just say directly whether it involves selling or typing forms to be clear.

Lastly, establish a strong social networking presence. Do not just get in for a few minutes and log-off. Chat and make comments with your potential clients. Be prompt in answering queries and post relevant information. If you keep on persisting, in the end the pay-off would be good.

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Basically,the very origin of social marketing theory can traced to G.D. Wiebe since in 1950s  he came up with the concept that perhaps it’s feasible to sell brotherhood and social thinking the way commercial goods like soap are sold. His journal on “Merchandising commodities and citizenship on television” proposed that non-profit campaigns that could eventually solve social problems can be made like commercial campaigns. Two decades after, his ideas were formalized later by well-known marketing guru Philip Kotler and Zaltzman in their work “Social Marketing: An Approach to Planned Social Change” published in 1971. This seminal work by Kotler and Zaltzman can be considered seminal work that espoused social marketing theory.

Because of this, some countries applied the social marketing theory launched public campaigns. It would be good to cite United Kingdom’s effort in launching aggressive commercial campaigns against drunk driving which were designed to be gruesome so the public would be shocked. In the same manner, Australia spearheaded in bringing social marketing theory to practice as the Victoria Cancer Council launched an anti-tobacco campaign in the late 80s according to the VicHealth history. Even developing countries like Philippines applied principles of social marketing theory in convincing the public to not use on New Year’s eve which results to loss of limbs.

Indeed, the application of social marketing theory has given birth to  a new type of campaign that governments can use efficiently in promoting something good for the public.

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A great deal of people can derive a lot of advantages from social marketing training, that includes employees of government agencies, NGOS, educational institutions, religious institutions, private sector and community organizations as well. Usually an organization has a sound plan that needs to be effectively implemented. On the other hand, the goals must be effectively communicated to the target audience that lessens barrier to changes.

By participating  in a social marketing training, several approaches as well as techniques can be learned so an organization can come up a creative mix of  strategies. The following topics are covered in a social marketing training:

Essentials of social marketing. A sound social marketing training must make participants understand basic concepts that are also found in marketing theories. As the training goes on, the program can include topics like social marketing research as well as using the newest technologies for marketing. This additionally covers analyzing the needs of the target audience.

Research mainly for social marketing Making research studies is a  required skill that must be enhanced in social marketing training. Without statistical data, credibility could be questioned in promoting a social campaign. Surveys, tests, interviews and other methods are taught in this module. Competitor analysis is a must so it’s part of the social marketing training segment.

Full workshop This is the most exciting part since this is where you would test the strategies you have created if they can effectively reach the audience and possibly cause behavioral change.

Advanced social marketing using new technologies. The Internet presents many oppurtunities in launching a social marketing campaign since it;s viral and reach more people. Using blogs, podcasting, mobile text messaging are covered in social marketing training.

Social marketing training is normally provided by many online organizations.

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